Mariana Farkas

This is me wearing the high school uniform, when I was in Budapest. You can see that there was another person in the photo, it was cut off, but I have no idea who it was. There is no year written on the back of the photo, but I think I was twelve years old, so the photo must have been taken around 1942, when I was in my second year of high school. I did the first four years of high school in Budapest.

There were Jewish elementary schools, but my parents sent me to a state school. There were private schools as well, but one had to pay a lot of money there so my parents sent me to a state school. But we had religion classes in school and we learned the Jewish alphabet, we learned to read. A Jewish teacher taught us. In school, I liked history a lot, it was like a story for me, but I didn't like some subjects where I had to calculate, like math, chemistry or physics. I had a favorite teacher, she taught history, she was our class teacher, whom I loved very much, but I don't remember her name. I never had problems with my teachers or with my colleagues because I was Jewish.

I had friends when I was in school, we visited each other, and they were Jews and non-Jews alike, there were no differences. I had a friend who lived in the same house as me, Farago Zsuzsa was her name, and we were neighbors. I don't remember other names, but it's startling that I do remember physiognomies. We went together to the swimming pool, skiing, and skating. We went to the cinema very often as well, we sneaked away from home, my mother didn't even know. I had pocket money and we went to the matinee performance. We had a cinema nearby, Ipoly was its name, and I loved the movies, they were extraordinarily good movies, and we had great artists: I saw very good Hungarian movies, but American ones as well. And we went to the theater for children, it was close, right near our house, the Vigszinhaz Theater, on Sundays there was always a matinee performance for children. I used to go with my father or my mother, or with both of them, but they didn't forbid me to go with just my friends.